Beyond the Soapbox: Facebook and the Public Sphere in Egypt

Anton Root

CyberOrient,
Vol. 6, Iss. 1, 2012

Abstract

The question of the internet as a forum for political debate is continuously contested. My research grows out of such scholarship but focuses specifically on Facebook as a virtual public sphere in Egypt. Based on an analysis of a note posted by Wael Ghonim during the January 25 uprising on the Facebook group ‘We are all Khaled Said,’ I discuss the structural and technological benefits of the platform, as well as user behavior and interaction with one another. Using Jürgen Habermas’ The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere and Yochai Benkler’s The Wealth of Networks as the theoretical groundwork for my study, I make observations about the internet’s ability to allow considered opinion, not just to record popular sentiment. I argue that while Facebook’s structure has both drawbacks and advantages for promoting discussion, the new medium's biggest limitation in helping to produce a virtual public sphere is user inexperience with the platform.

The events that took place in Egypt between January 25 and February
11, 2011 shocked the world, if only because of the veneer of stability created
by ex-president Husni Mubarak's regime. When examined carefully, however, the
Egyptian uprising that led to Mubarak's ousting and the dissolution of his
National Democratic Party (NDP) reveals itself to have been a long-term
project. As internet and social media usage rates increase worldwide, more
groups and individuals will find themselves in the position of the Egyptians -
a people with a newfound ability to express opinions contrary to those of a
small ruling elite.

While the role of the media, specifically social media, in the
Egyptian uprising has been hotly contested by pundits, the arguments have
tended to be too general to accurately judge the value of new media in aiding
the uprising. In my article, I wish to better understand the concept of the
public sphere as it applies to the modern world. The media landscape has gone
through a number of profound changes since the invention of the internet, and
the current focus on interaction and participation in the media seems to fit
well with the tenets of the public sphere. A society in which exist a healthy
sphere for reasoned discussion and civil society can help to expand citizens'
political role. If Facebook, along with other social media platforms, was able
to expand the public sphere in Egypt, it would represent a crucial political
development, as well as strengthen the public sphere theory.

In order to evaluate the role of social media in the Egyptian
uprising, I attempt to mine the value of the Facebook group 'We are all Khaled
Said,' analyzing the deliberation surrounding one note posted by Wael Ghonim
before Mubarak's announcement of resignation. I will filter my analysis through
the lens of the public sphere as constructed by sociologist and political
scientist Jürgen Habermas in his monograph The Structural Transformation of
the Public Sphere. Focusing solely on the notion of the public sphere, I
look through the comments posted on Facebook and seek out similarities between
Egyptians' use of social media and the media Habermas wrote about in his
analysis of social movements in Europe, as well as the updated,
internet-specific model presented by Yochai Benkler in The Wealth of
Networks.

I argue that Facebook does have the
necessary components of becoming a place for considered debate and a virtual
public sphere, but that users' inexperience with the platform has severely
limited this capability. Before looking at Facebook and the public sphere,
however, I establish the political and social contexts of the uprising. I focus
specifically on the past decade of flawed economic and political policies put
in place by Mubarak and his ministers and how this atmosphere was able to make
two previously unknown men - Khaled Said and Wael Ghonim - the symbols of the
uprising. I then turn to Habermas' conception of the public sphere as outlined
in The Structural Transformation, comparing his historical narrative to
the virtual public sphere (if it may be so called) created by the Egyptians on
Facebook.

Egypt's Economic and Political Regression

The liberalization of Egypt's economy began in the late 1970s by
Anwar Sadat in order to spur slowing economic growth rates (Africa News 2010).
The next two and a half decades saw privatization of state assets and an
abandonment of policies that had supported workers and peasants (Dahi 2010).
While bread riots did erupt in Egypt on numerous occasions, as they did
throughout the region, the authorities were able to subvert dissident
activities by dividing the opposition and cracking down on radicals. Though
liberalization and foreign investment in the mid-1980s and early 1990s did help
the economy (and especially the military, which was the main beneficiary of
foreign investment), the growth rates once again began to fall in the late
1990s and early 2000s. The economic liberalization decreased the power of NDP
and the military. As more wealthy businessmen profited from the new economic
policy, the state grip on the economy withered, becoming confined to "judicial,
legislative and security - rather than economic - issues." (Africa News 2010)

In order to counter its diminishing influence over the economy, the
Mubarak regime attempted to consolidate power in other ways. The November 2010
rigged parliamentary elections serve as an example of the NDP's falling
legitimacy and the desperate measures the party had to resort to in order to
stay in power. Traditionally, voting had been a way for NDP to retain its
façade of popular approval. By giving the voters a choice - flawed though it
may have been - the regime was able to sacrifice a small number of local seats
without threatening the large parliamentary majority it had expected to enjoy.
Though the rigging may have deepened Egyptians' disillusionment in previous
elections, the blatantly fixed vote of late 2010 came alongside "rising food
prices, growing economic disparity, a media crackdown, and a citizenry fed up
with police brutality." (Topol 2010)

As the government became more and
more detached from the population, cooperation among opposition groups - or, at
least, tolerance of one another - grew. This made the state weaker: it became
harder to exploit the differences among the secular and Islamist opposition
groups. It also made the opposition stronger, as it presented a unified and
coordinated front against the regime and made it clear that the stereotypes
perpetuated by the regime were nothing but gross propaganda.

Much of this anti-government
cooperation has taken place online. Internet usage in Egypt increased in 2002,
when the government privatized the sector and ended its monopoly over internet
service (Bahgat 2004). Blogging became a popular medium of voicing opinions
around 2004 and 2005, and it helped to forge the Kifaya movement - an alliance
of opposition groups which called on Mubarak to leave and was against the
succession of Mubarak's son to the presidency (Hirschkind 2011). As Charles
Hirschkind (2010) noted, "while many of those who write and within the
blogosphere are involved in Islamist organizations, and identify themselves on
their blogs as members of these organizations, the political language they are
developing online departs radically from that used within these organizations."Put simply, the Kifaya movement and the bloggers who supported it
played an important part in creating a culture of unified resistance against an
authoritarian government that had been able to impose emergency laws for almost
three decades. It is little wonder that when the government
declared January 25 a national holiday to honor the police - freeing up the
population to voice its displeasure - tens of thousands of Egyptians marched in
protest.

The
protests continued across Egypt for over two weeks, making famous the names
Khaled Said and Wael Ghonim. They also raised questions among commenters on the
media about the power of social media, specifically Facebook, and communicative
action in closed societies. Said's death became a rallying point for many
Egyptians, who initially saw his case as a humanitarian (not political) issue
that the government had to deal with, but failed. This was the sentiment that
Ghonim captured in his posts as the administrator of the Facebook group 'We are
all Khaled Said.'

That 'We are all Khaled Said,'
along with other Facebook groups and other forms of media, played an
instrumental role by helping to organize, document, and publicize the uprising
is clear. What my article examines is the role of Facebook beyond that, looking
at its potential impact on the public sphere in a country that has experienced
decades of political repression and media censorship, limiting critical debate
and communicative action. By highlighting the relevant aspects of Habermas'
conception of the public sphere, I establish a loose standard to which a forum
should adhere, if it is to be considered a space for rational debate.

The Public Sphere, Then and Now

In 1962, Jürgen Habermas wrote The Structural Transformation of
the Public Sphere, the manuscript that helped to launch a new field of
political theory. In his book, Habermas essentially "asks when and under what
conditions the arguments of mixed companies could become authoritative bases
for political action," (Calhoun 1992: 1). The private individual was a product
of a new social order that became possible due to the "emergence of early
finance and trade capitalism," (Habermas 1989: 14) which enabled a bourgeois
class to separate itself from the individuals ruling the state and dominate
certain parts of the economy. This eventually led to the development of civil
society, which "came into existence as the corollary of a depersonalized state
authority," (Habermas 1989: 19). Market forces helped to solidify the private
realm by encouraging interactions outside of state control. They also helped to
mold "news itself [into] a commodity," (Habermas 1989: 21) creating a way to
popularize ideas that did not necessarily go along with (and in many cases went
against) the agenda set by the ruling class.

As Habermas notes, the "medium" of the deliberation between the
public and the state was "peculiar and without precedent: people's public use
of their reason," (Habermas 1989: 27). It was the best ideas - regardless of
the identity of the speaker - were the ones that held the most clout. Opinion
was considered, not common, and the participants scrutinized every
proclamation. They attempted to distill from a plurality of selfish interests
those that were the most universal - "general, abstract [and] depersonalized,"
(Calhoun 1992: 14). Disagreement, skepticism and criticism were meant to
improve the strength of the argument to make it palatable to even the most
ardent disbelievers. Habermas goes on to say, however, that this does not mean
the transformation of public discourse into a sort of market for ideas, which
would imply that some were producers and others consumers, and that some had a
disproportional wealth to promote certain ideas - the "laws of the market were
suspended as were the laws of the state," (Habermas 1989: 36).

Forums for debate also presupposed "the problematization of areas
that until then had not been questioned," (Habermas 1989: 36). When information
became, at least in theory, available to all, it also became available to all
interpretations, not a single one formulated by the ruling class or the church,
thus challenging the status quo. Related to this was the tenet establishing the
public as "inclusive in principle," (Calhoun 1992: 13). Habermas does not mean
to say that the public sphere was composed of all members of society, but that
the availability of information via the market made it theoretically available
to all, thus making inclusiveness a necessary (though elusive) condition of the
public sphere.

Egypt's public sphere and civil society were weak before the fall of
Mubarak, but they were not hopeless. The factors that allowed for the creation
of the private individual were present in Egypt, as well. Many people were able
to make monetary transactions outside of the realm of the state, but the
government still controlled a large part of the economy. Indeed, the most
lucrative positions and the ones that offered the best way for advancements -
the military and the bureaucracy - were still tied to the state. Only the
entertainment industry offered as good of an opportunity for advancement for
middle-class Egyptians (Khalil 2012). The class comparable to Habermas'
conception of the bourgeoisie was thus within the state, not outside it. Still,
Egypt was developing a middle class that, in a way, leapfrogged the Egyptian
economy and was establishing itself in the global market; Wael Ghonim typifies
this demographic (National
Public Radio 2011).

The role of the media in shaping the Egyptian public sphere was
important even before the social media explosion. While Habermas 'disapproved'
of the mass media, it is important to highlight it here to help understand the
Egyptian context. Before the January 25 uprising, Egypt's national channels and
newspapers were not actively censored, providing an outlet for those
dissatisfied with the regime. This enabled the administration to keep a
semblance of legitimacy in the eyes of the international community, which would
have condemned outright censorship. However, the regime subjected the media to
more subtle pressure and censorship. In 2010, for example, the state-controlled
Nilesat company stopped airing 12 private satellite channels that supported the
opposition Muslim Brotherhood a month before parliamentary elections (Committee
to Protect Journalists 2011). International channels like Al Jazeera (based in
Qatar) and Al Arabiya (based in Dubai, owned by Saudi Arabia) are not directly
affected by such censorship, though the government decided to black out Al
Jazeera's coverage in Egypt during the January 25 uprising (ABS-CBN News 2011).

Despite its seemingly rigid, one-to-many format of information
dissemination, broadcast media actually helped to open up debate and promoted
various viewpoints. Egypt is a regional broadcasting hub, and it has the
highest number of households with televisions in the MENA region (Allam 2010). El
Moustafa Lahlali (2011: 66) writes, "the wide range of programmes offered by the
Arab media has encouraged debate and rational criticism, which has been missing
for so long in the Arab public sphere."Hirschkind's writings support this
analysis. He writes that blogging, which emerged several years after Al Jazeera
became popular, "allowed for the possibility of linkages, the articulation of
shared interest and desires that otherwise would remain hidden, or at least
fail to find institutional expression within existing forms of affiliation and
political action." (Hirschkind 2010)

The internet allowed for many more people to express their opinions,
which often lay contrary to the opinions of the state, but it was not the first
medium that allowed for the expansion of the public sphere. In addition to
promoting publics and critical-rational debate, television also promoted
education and literacy. Habermas does not single either of these out as a
positive contribution of mass media, though - especially for illiterate
Egyptians - popular media was one of very few sources of education. Before the
uprising, the internet and broadcast media, even if they were not acting as a
space for rational debate, began to alter the practices of the opposition and
invited more deliberation among the citizens.

Though Habermas provides a good starting point for discussing the
public sphere, applying a theory that was originally conceived in the context
of bourgeois European societies to today's Middle East does not come without a
set of challenges. For one, "the terms 'public' and 'private' are
conceptualized distinctly in the Western discourse and the Arabic discourse,"
(Zayani 2008: 71). This is especially true in the case of religion, which
Habermas assigned to the private realm, "denying it sufficient visibility
within the public sphere," (el-Nawawy, Khamis 2011: 236). Furthermore, though
the public sphere theory "rests on a degree of tolerance for difference... the
co-existence of different traditions and viewpoints does not always produce
symmetrical relationships whereby the better argument prevails," (Zayani 2008:
71). This is true in Egypt, a society marked by old traditions and drastic
divides among its people. On top of that, it is unclear whether an Egyptian
public with a stronger voice will necessarily demand democracy. As Zayani
points out, "the emergence and consolidation of an Arab public sphere does not
necessarily herald democracy."

While these are important critiques that the reader must be aware
of, I do not deal with them directly in this article. My goal here is to
determine whether and how the tenets of public sphere manifest themselves in the
specific Facebook group I am examining. It is not inconceivable that a certain
aspect of a country's public sphere behaves differently from the rest, and I
wish to determine the traits of the public as it manifested itself on Facebook.

Public Sphere and Facebook

In many societies, Egypt included,
citizens have been unable to build healthy civil society groups and to engage
their peers in rational public debate. Online media are only one aspect of a
vibrant society, but they occupy an important place due to their appeal to the
middle class and their emphasis on participation, not consumption. I analyze
the discussions of the Facebook group 'We are all Khaled Said,' looking
specifically for the factors that Habermas deemed to be crucial to the public
sphere. Key among these are difference of opinion which leads to considered,
not common, goals; a production of cultural as well as political commodities; a
disregard of status among the participants and inclusiveness as basic tenets;
common interest in truth or right policy; and an attempt to distill personal
desires into abstract, universal ideals. I add to this list an important tenet
of Yochai Benkler's, that the networked public sphere provides a way for
readers and users to verify or refute claims made by their peers, what Benkler
calls the "linking and 'see for yourself'" advantage of a virtual public
sphere, (Benkler 2006: 219).

In order to conduct my study, I
have chosen to analyze a note written by Wael Ghonim and 100 comments to the
note. I will begin by looking at the content of the note, moving to the
comments thereafter. I decided to focus on the minutia and take a bottom-up
approach, drawing cautious conclusions only after having analyzed a specific
conversation on Facebook. Looking at a small sample of comments has its
limitations, and my research is by no means conclusive. Yet focusing on the
details and conversations is required to better answer questions about social
media's effect on the public sphere.

Tension in Egypt had been brewing
over the course of late January and early February. Ghonim wrote the note that
I analyze at 3:00 p.m. on February 11, several hours before Omar Suleiman's
brief statement announcing Mubarak's departure. The protesters' demeanor had begun to turn
markedly sour after a speech made the night before by Mubarak, in which he
announced his desire to stay in power, blamed the unrest on foreign elements,
and called on the protesters to go home. The mood in Tahrir and elsewhere was
"difficult to define - equal parts deflation, determination, and a mounting
sense of pure rage," (Khalil 2012: 259). The sense of blind defiance extended
to the pages of 'We are all Khaled Said,' which by that point had evolved from
an apolitical call for the investigation of Said's beating to a more directly
anti-regime movement; some users began to question Ghonim's allegiance to the
revolution due to a misunderstanding.

A rumor began to circulate on the
group's wall that Ghonim supported Mubarak staying on in an honorary figurehead
position - anathema to those whose demands explicitly included Mubarak's
resignation and a promise that Gamal would not succeed his father. This myth
came about due to misreporting by the Middle East News Agency, which claimed
that Ghonim called on the protesters to leave after Mubarak's speech, when
Ghonim actually said this before the speech, thinking that Mubarak was
announcing his resignation (Ghonim 2012: 60, 284). The pressure being exerted
on him, combined with the fact that he wrote many of his messages emotionally
and spontaneously, resulted in a note that was raw and evocative, but also
somewhat jumbled. It not only highlighted the divide between new and old forms
of media - Ghonim did not clarify his statements in an interview, but chose
instead to speak directly to his readers - but also bridged the gap between the
virtual and 'real' worlds.

Ghonim (2011) begins by proclaiming
that "Egypt is above all," affirming his patriotism, which was questioned by
members of the group. He continues to highlight his fight for the revolution up
to that point, reminding the readers of his activism for Egypt's freedom and
the imprisonment he suffered because of it. His third point speaks directly to
the publicness of the group and the concentrated effort of all Egyptians, not
just one individual, in the success they protesters had had thus far: "the
voice of the people is stronger than the voice of any one person... The people
are stronger [than any leader] and the people are now in the streets fighting
for their points of view regardless of the point of view of Wael Ghonim."

That Ghonim commends the collective over any
individuals is encouraging, but he neglects to mention his readers and the
users on 'We are all Khaled Said' as contributors to the revolution. While many
Egyptians writing on the page's walls and commenting on each others' posts were
also likely to be partaking in the street protests, it is clear that at least
some of the people were participating in the uprising solely by expressing
their opinions online. This would have been the case with Egyptians (and other
Arabic speakers) living abroad. Ghonim's neglecting to acknowledge the role of
the individuals who are willing to express their opinion online speaks to the
way their contributions are perceived vis-à-vis those actually partaking in the
protests.

Ghonim is at once shaping opinion
and stating that the opinions of others deserve to be respected, playing the
role of the moderator that is reasonable but impartial. As the group's creator,
he has the responsibility to encourage a plurality of ideas and establish the
ideal that the group's publicness is inclusive in principle. That he promotes
his own opinions while also encouraging others' is in itself not damaging to
the freedom of the public sphere, as long as those who oppose him are able to
voice their opinions. The note's visibility as the main text, however, allows
for Ghonim's opinion to be buttressed by the structure of the forum itself.
This is problematic but not entirely disqualifying the group from being a
virtual public sphere -the pamphleteers and publishers that were
important to Habermas were also acting as moderators and filterers of
information while (either directly or indirectly) establishing their own
opinions on the subjects they discussed.

Facebook's Structural Inhibitions and Benefits

By 3:30 p.m., only
thirty minutes after Ghonim published his note, 3031 of the 6003 responses had
already been appeared - a rate of around 100 comments per minute, or 1.67
comments per second. This is a huge response and it indicates the importance of
the page as a forum. By default, Facebook shows the 50 most recent comments,
though users can click and open up the 'pages' of older comments, 50 at a time.
At such a rate, those whose comments take five minutes to formulate and type
would be ten 'pages' - 500 comments - ahead of where they began typing. The
commenters, thus, would have a hard time, 1) identifying where in the
conversation they began typing and what was said before the comment that led to
their idea; 2) finding any responses to their comments; 3) keeping up with the
ideas posted before during the time it took them to write the comment; and,
thereby, 4) sustaining a back-and-forth conversation with (especially) one, or
more, individuals. Keeping track of all the new comments - if that is what one
intended to do - would be nearly impossible during the time the conversation
was taking place, making it difficult for all opinions to surface and have a
chance to be debated.

Of course, not all comments were
analytical enough to take five minutes to compose, the seemingly most common
being expressions, "Enough, Wael!" or "I am/we are all with you, Wael." They
offer no explanation as to why, or whether, the user either opposes Ghonim or
supports him, nor do they reference any of Ghonim's ten points, making it
impossible to understand what exactly the commenter's position is on the issues
at hand. Those users looking to circumvent the speed issue reposted their
messages several times into the comments. This made their viewpoints more
prominent by appearing more frequently, which helped to mitigate the issue of
speed, as well as the issues created by the overall number of comments,
discussed below.

If speed is to be scrutinized,
however, its benefits must also be mentioned. Never before in Egypt - or any
other place, for that matter - could such a multitude of opinions be recorded
in so little time. Had the regime chosen to censor or punish those spreading
heretical opinions, the task would have proven Sisyphean. Its monitors would be
lost not only in the high numbers of responders, but also at the speed with
which the responses were coming in. Recording and deciding which comments were
the most egregious requires time - this time may not be long, but it is certainly
longer than the seconds it took for new comments to appear. Indeed, targeting
the top echelons of online dissent, Ghonim and internet access itself, seems to
be the only sensible (but, in hindsight, misguided) solution.

The sheer number of comments presents
its own challenges, which are magnified by the speed at which they appear. This
criticism is often described as the 'Babel objection' (Benkler 2006: 10).
Benkler pinpoints this criticism into three arguments, 1) that large sums of
money will have to be spent in order to promote one's opinion, despite the low
entry costs to digital publishing; 2) that the readers will fragment and "individuals will
view the world through millions of personally customized windows that will
offer no common ground for political discourse or action, except among groups
of highly similar individuals who customize their windows to see similar
things;" and 3) that discourse among these "highly similar individuals" will
damage deliberation by polarizing the discourse (Benkler 2006: 234 - 235). As Benkler shows, some scholars have responded to this criticism by
highlighting the centralizing power of the internet, in which power law - the
tendency for few sties to attract many visitors, and many sites to attract very
few visitors - prevails in shaping and few sites are able to draw large numbers
of readers. For a central group like 'We are all Khaled Said,' however, the
problem of too many voices reemerges once again, on an individual-site scale,
rather than internet-wide scale. Examining if and how the three points
highlighted above surfaced in the comments of 'We are all Khaled Said' is
important, as much of the scholarship pertaining to internet and the public
sphere takes them into account.

Regarding the issue of money dominating discourse, the
government was one entity with a budget large enough to shape the discourse. It
is impossible to tell just how heavily the state monitored the internet, or how
much resources the government spent on promoting its own point of view. However,
the regime's point of view was not highly prevalent on social media, creating a
negligible effect, if any at all. Grassroots campaigns like 'We are all Khaled
Said' were not commercially driven. While it takes some amount of time and
money to create a group or participate in its discussion, throwing more money
at the group's comments would have had little effect on its discourse. If it
became apparent that somebody was 'spamming' for his or her own commercial or
political benefit, the other users would either oust the party responsible or
move their conversation to another group. The readers of the group found the
site, despite the fact that Ghonim spent very little money to promote the page
and decided to contribute because of their solidarity with the group, not
because of a commercial incentive.

The fact that Ghonim began his group
as a civil and not political one allowed him to gather more followers than most
of the overtly politicized opposition groups. By focusing on a commonality
among the Egyptians, Ghonim was able to at once deal with the two other
problems proposed by the 'Babel objection.' The initially non-political nature
of the group enabled it to recruit politicized individuals of different
opinions. It brought them in contact with one another for a common cause,
serving as important training that would unite the country during the January
25 uprising. As we will see, the range of opinions expressed on the page did
not lessen as the uprising gained steam and Ghonim became more firmly anti-Mubarak.
As the political situation in the country became more volatile, the group's
members began to express their opinions more clearly and unabashedly. With such
a number of competing ideas, it would have been difficult for any user to
become more polarized and radical in his or her thinking. Whether or not these
ideas were actually 'competing' against each other and judged by the readers on
their credibility and strength of argument is the topic of the next section.

Comment Analysis

The comments I have
chosen to analyze for what they add to the public sphere are not an entirely
random sample. Not knowing the content of the comments, I had no way of being
prejudiced in order to support my hypothesis. However, I did decide to look at
comments written over an hour after Ghonim's initial post in order to mitigate
the effects of the speed problem outlined above. The comments also passed the
'eye test' in terms of their length - there were a few long comments and not as
many single-line, simplistic statements either affirming the commenter's
solidarity with Ghonim or saying "Enough!" to the protests. The average comment
was around 50 words long, enough to formulate a measured response to either
Ghonim's note, or to an earlier comment. Of course, those who wanted to express
their opinion in a fuller way had the option of doing so and did - the longest
of the comments was by user 'Sisters of Saudi Arabia,' who voiced her
frustration with Ghonim's interview in 665 words.

The comments showed
a wide range of opinions on a long list of issues, from Ghonim himself, to the
Egyptian military, to foreign intervention. Of the 100 comments, 35 supported
Ghonim, 22 antagonized him, 17 referred to Ghonim but did not make clear
whether the user was in support of him or not, and 26 did not address Ghonim at
all. 'Shehab Elgendy,' for example,
wrote, "The lives of those who are being harmed and those who will be
killed in the coming days will be on your neck Wael. It is your fault that this
sedition is being spread everywhere. Just stop this already." Others were more
specific and less malicious in their criticism. 'Dr. K. Kamal,' for example,
wrote, "Wael you are playing with our minds. You need to pick a direction to
follow, go either right, or left. But you cannot say one thing and then later
on, say something else." Others supported Ghonim. 'Mohamed Nabil
Ali,' responding to one of the prevalent themes in the comments, wrote, "Wael,
I urge you to ignore those idiots that say that America and Israel will enter
our country because they are simply idiots who do not understand anything."

These inflammatory phrases and
name-callings, however, did not have an effect on the commenters as they
continued to express a wide view of opinions. This is likely due to the
detachment from the conversation caused by the medium. The difference between a mass media environment in which the vast
majority participate by consuming and one in which they are also able to
publish their opinion is stark. In pre-revolutionary Egypt, the detachment from
the real world - unrepresentative and authoritarian - only served to encourage
ideas and participation in the public debate. There was little
government-sanctioned space for any dissent, so it had to move either out of
the country, as demonstrated by satellite channels, or online.

Curiously,
user 'Rabab Farouk,' after chiding those who claimed that the achievements of
the protests to that point had achieved enough, wrote, "So
please, if you are simply too lazy to go out and protest, leave it to the
bravery of those out on the streets to get us our rights back." The irony in
him writing this statement on Facebook is unmistakable, but it is a significant
proclamation as it distinguishes between the 'brave' protesters on the street
who are calling for more reforms and those who are content with Mubarak's
concessions. Farouk, it seems, does not mean to say that all those on Facebook
are 'lazy.' He is encouraging people to out to the streets, but his statement
makes it clear that it is possible to participate in both spheres, and as long
as the message for Mubarak to step down is being promoted.

During
the uprising itself, some, though certainly not all, users participated in the
protests, creating a bridge between the real and the virtual worlds. The
majority of protesters would likely have gone to the January 25 protests had
they been active on social media or not. However, the group 'We are all Khaled
Said' was instructive and inspired its readers to participate in real-world
campaigns. Aside from educating its readers, it also helped to promote cultural
production, which the Mubarak regime was previously a patron of. Ghonim often
posted pictures of graffiti and cartoons on the group's wall, as well as short
YouTube videos and songs. The group became not just a place for expressing
opinions, but also a cultural center that resisted Mubarak's rule in its
totality. This cultural and opinion production helped the group to have a
closer immediacy to the real world than a public sphere shaped by mass media
alone.

Calling someone
a khain (traitor) seems to be one of the few ways of interaction among
the Facebook group's commenters. Indeed, for Habermas a key tenet of the public
sphere is that it does "not merely [promote] sharing
what people already think or know but [that it is] also a process of potential
transformation in which reason is advanced by debate itself," (Calhoun 1992:
29). I found few signs of furthering of ideas and deliberation in the comments
I analyzed. Structurally, Facebook's continuous stream of comments - unlike
threaded commenting that is prevalent on news websites and blogs - makes it
hard to organize and pacify the speed and number problems outlined above. It
also makes it nearly impossible to understand who a user is referring to.

The
users' online skill level and understanding of Facebook's commenting platform
also undermined the potential for a coherent discussion forming. One commenter,
'Aisha Gamal Ibrahim,' for example, wrote simply, "I agree with the opinion you
wrote to Wael, but not the comment," apparently referring to another commenter.
A more advanced user decided to copy and paste the name of the person to whom
he was responding in English, which would theoretically make it easy to find
both the original commenter and any subsequent follow-ups. The substance of his
reply, however, left much to be desired: "Mohamed Faisal, You are an
ignoramus." Faisal did not comment again on Ghonim's note, despite having
initially written a relatively lengthy post praising the administrator.

Indeed,
the disappearing persona seems to be a recurring theme in Facebook comments.
One of the first responses to Ghonim's note was by a man named Sofien. The
comment must have been either extremely insightful or inflammatory, as it
prompted a number of responses that voiced support for the Egyptian military.
As one of the few comments that incited such commotion, I was anxious to read
it; unfortunately, it was not there. Perhaps, Sofien did not like the attention
he was getting and deleted it; perhaps, he deleted his Facebook account
altogether - or was kicked off the website. Another comment, a relatively
harmless one written by 'Dr. K. Kamal' had disappeared over the course of my
study. Another user, who originally went by 'Tarek Mohamed,' had since changed
his name to the more ambiguous 'Commandos Force,' and began toting Gamal Abdel
Nasser's photograph as his profile picture.

The
group's commenters were also not very keen in returning to the conversation -
477 users contributed more than one comment. The vast majority of those posted
only two different comments. Only five individuals posted ten or more unique
comments. Overall, of 6003 comments, 79.7% were by users who posted only one
unique response (some users copied and pasted the same comment, which increased
the comment's visibility but did very little to advance discussion). I do not
mean to imply that there were no comments that responded to someone else. The
majority of comments that did refer to someone directly, however, were targeted
at Ghonim.

Some
users did decide to post their opinions to things other than Ghonim's
statement, leading to at least the potential for debate of these tangents.
While very few people responded to specific users, many more responded to
categories of users at a time - "Whoever says that Wael will take the first
flight out of Egypt if Israel attacks us...," "To all those who
took part in this revolution for the sake of change and for the sake of
bringing down corruption...," "How interesting it is that all of sudden
people are asking others to calm down..." Due to the
large number of comments, the users appear to be keen on targeting strands of
ideas and multiple individuals at once. Thus, one user responds to many, in a
way replicating the mass media model of the public sphere. Of course, on
Facebook, the 'many' can respond, though there seems to be little desire among
the commenters of 'We are all Khaled Said' to have back-and-forth
conversations. While some did attempt to spur discussion, such efforts were
mostly futile, as most readers only posted once and the number and speed of the
comments made it difficult to keep up with the conversation.

One way
to encourage discussion amid the commenters would be 'electing' representatives
who argue on behalf of the masses. This would allow for ideas to be deliberated
among few individuals, representing large groups of followers; this structure
is the backbone of representative democracies worldwide. While Facebook as a
platform does enable 'Likes' - a simple voting tool that does not reveal any insight,
but could be used to single out the authors of the top comments - these were
not used effectively and tended to favor the earliest comments to Ghonim's
note. As the frequency of the comments increased, it became simply too
time-consuming to look back into the comments, as the new comments were coming
at torrential speeds. Had there been a feature to sort the comments by the
number of 'Likes,' it may have been possible to sort out the best arguments and
establish the several users whose input was valued the most by his/her peers.
Since no such function exists, however, the most liked comments to Ghonim's
note are currently hidden among several thousand others.

Complicating
the idea of an elected representative is the fact that few people seemed willing
to distill their comments to the most basic and agreeable tenets in order to
help the discussion. While some did distinguish between personal beliefs and
the best course of action for the country, the majority of
comments either reflected personal opinions or collective opinions not
necessarily backed by the reality of the wide range of viewpoints represented
in the group's comments. There is a distinct difference between forming
an opinion based on personal experience that can be discussed among many people
and assuming that one's opinion applies to all; the overwhelming majority of
the 100 comments I analyzed fell into the latter group. Supporting one's
opinion with an argument based on established facts - what Benkler called
"linking and 'seeing for yourself'" - did take place, but was also
underdeveloped.

While linking is theoretically possible in Facebook comments, the
practical use of the feature has not kept up to its potential. Ideally,
it should provide evidence for arguments, move the discussion forward,
establish writers' credibility, and protect against fragmentation. There are only 150 links in the 6003 comments to Ghonim's note, and
many of those are the same links 'advertising' other Facebook groups and pages,
and YouTube videos. In fact, there were only eight unique links that referred
readers to sites other than Facebook and YouTube. Of these eight, five linked
users to blogs or forums. Those looking to provide support for their arguments
or to educate their peers, therefore, only linked to six articles published in
three established organizations, The Guardian, Al Masry Al Yaum, and Al Yaum As
Saba'. Few links were used in context, as many of them were posted on their own
or with only a sentence or two - hardly enough space for a genuine critique of
the contents.

Conclusion

Egypt's
economic, communicative, and political developments over the past decade
created conditions in which an alternate, underground political sphere would
not only thrive, but would be essential for expressing opinions in a
non-violent matter. The brutal beating of Khaled Said stood in stark contract
with Egyptians' non-violent calls for change in the country and enabled Wael
Ghonim to create a virtual space in which people of various political
affiliations could unite for a humanitarian, not political cause. As the
Egyptians' conditions deteriorated, the group became more politicized - not
necessarily backing a specific candidate (even though Ghonim was a supporter of
El Baradei), but opposing the current regime. Ghonim's marketing prowess, as
well as the structure and the comments on the Facebook group 'We are all Khaled
Said,' have shown that while some problems of the mass-media public sphere are
scaled back in a networked environment, new ones arise.

As
constructed in the comments to Ghonim's note, the most significant benefits of
the virtual public sphere that I examined are: 1) the inclusive atmosphere
which is impersonal and anonymous enough to encourage responses; 2) the
creation of a virtual 'community' that generates not only educational but also
cultural products; 3) the ability to use various forms of media to support
one's argument, including pictures and video; 4) the ability to see others'
opinions on a mass scale; 5) the capability to push a story into the
mainstream; and therefore 6) the feeling of contribution to a national dialogue
that, in the past, had been limited to only a few individuals.

However,
serious drawbacks are also apparent: 1) the speed (as well as the number) of
the comments makes it nearly impossible to sort out any continuous thread of
ideas; 2) the difference in the level of understanding of the medium makes less
advanced commenters incapable of using the platform's full range of tools; 3)
the contentious nature of the topic made various personal opinions hard to
distill into relatable similarities among the Egyptians, which, while did not
fragment the users, made the vast majority of comments too specific or too
presumptuous to encourage reasoned debate; 4) the benefit of relative anonymity,
which encouraged comments, also made commenters likely to not follow the
discussion or read reactions to their post; and 5) the ideal of linked,
fact-backed discussion was hardly apparent, as the few commenters that used
outside sources linked only to several places.

The
benefits and drawbacks outlined above do not fit neatly into the Habermasean
tenets of the public sphere. To be sure, there was a considerable variety of
opinion expressed among users posting in the comments, both regarding Ghonim
and the uprising itself; cultural as well as political ideas were expressed;
there was an interest in doing what was best for Egypt and its citizens, though
the course of action varied differently; and inclusiveness was a
well-established fact, though some users certainly did not express the utmost
respect toward those whose ideas were drastically different. On the other hand,
there were few attempts to distill personal opinions and desires into universal
goals; few used the linking feature and the links that did appear were
homogeneous; ideas were rarely debated; and very few people trying to engage
their peers into a conversation.

Structurally,
Facebook can be an apt platform for a virtual public sphere, but it is not
without its limitations. Linking is easy, which gives users the potential to
buttress their opinions with credible sources. Facebook also enables readers to
vote for the best arguments by 'Liking' them, giving any comment the potential
to stand out. However, the problem of the 'disappearing persona' is a keen one.
It reduces the amount of trust the users have toward each other and damages the
inclusiveness aspect of the public sphere. While the tools for publishing an
opinion are relatively cheap and accessible to many Egyptians, the fact that
every user is able to delete his or her comment, instead of attempting to
support or elaborate it when it is questioned by others, undermines any chance
for a coherent debate taking place. This is especially true if the deleted
comment was a controversial one, which seemed to be the case with 'Sofien's'
missing post. Another structural flaw the constant stream of comments makes it
nearly impossible to engage someone in a structured debate. There are ways to
circumvent this problem (by copying and pasting someone's name into the
comment, for example) and several users did use the platform to its fullest
advantage in order to stimulate discussion. The vast majority, however, did
not. The detachment from the chaos of Tahrir could have been beneficial to the
users; for most, however, it was not, as their (understandably) emotional and
rash comments hurt the prospect of deliberation in the comments.

User
indifference was hardly an issue, as a range of opinions was expressed and at
times quite forcefully. The main issue inhibiting the commenters, I believe,
was their inexperience with the medium. While some users left comments that
encouraged responses or themselves responded to opposing viewpoints, the
atmosphere in the comments was hardly one in which "reason is advanced by
debate itself," (Calhoun 1992: 29). The conversations that took place were
largely stuck in several simple narratives, with users mainly avoiding
confrontation with others' ideas, choosing instead to label them traitors if
their opinions were too unorthodox. This atmosphere may have been encouraged by
both the violence on the streets of Egypt, as well as the decades of seeing
government libel against its opponents in the mass media. It seemed,
ultimately, as if the users were looking to broadcast their messages to the
greatest number of people, instead of standing behind each comment and
attempting to advance the debate by resorting to a rational discourse. It
should not come as a surprise that Ghonim - a marketing executive at Google,
after all - was perhaps the ideal internet user in engaging the virtual
Egyptian public sphere. The way he and co-administrator Abdel Rahman Mansour
moderated the page, filtering the news and cultivating a culture of disbelief
of the status quo, allowed it to become a virtual community.

But
Ghonim can also be criticized for not doing more to shape the community into a
sphere for deliberation and for not responding to the users in order to set an
example of a back-and-forth conversation. Ghonim's prominence as the note's
writer of the certainly allowed his viewpoints and opinions to be the most
visible; however, the same was true of the writers and pamphleteers 250 years
ago. The difference between the Facebook administrator and the European writers
is the medium that they use to spread their ideas and beliefs. Ghonim did
encourage some participation, through voting or commenting, and repeatedly
stated that his opinion is not the opinion of every protester. He may have been
more effective, however, by using Facebook's tools to interact with his readers
in a back-and-forth manner, not just creating more lively debate, but also
providing an example to the other users.

How
Egyptian public sphere will adapt to the post-Mubarak era remains to be seen.
While Facebook is a promising tool that may be used for genuine deliberation,
it is not yet widespread or familiar enough to influence the country's public
sphere at large. It does, however, provide a unique set of tools to the few
individuals who are interested in encouraging political discussion. If these
individuals can lead by example and promote rational critical debate,
Facebook's effect on the public sphere at large, in Egypt and elsewhere, will
become more pronounced.

El-Nawawy, Mohammed and Sahar Khamis 2011. Political Blogging and
(Re) Envisioning the Virtual Public Sphere: Muslim - Christian Discourses in
Two Egyptian Blogs. The International Journal of Press/Politics 16(2):236.

Topol, Sarah A. 2010. Elections Boost Mubarak. Newsweek, December 20.

Zayani, Mohamed 2008. The Challenges and Limits of Universalist
Concepts: Problematizing Public Opinion and a Mediated Arab Public Sphere.
Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication 1:71.